CMO vs Chief Growth Officer: What’s the Difference?
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerA CMO owns marketing — brand, demand, and how the business is seen and grows through marketing; a Chief Growth Officer owns growth as a broader, cross-functional mission spanning marketing, product, data, and commercial. The CMO leads a function; the Chief Growth Officer integrates several. […]
What Does a VP of Finance Do?
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerA VP of Finance leads and runs the finance function operationally — financial planning and analysis, reporting, budgeting, and often the finance team — usually with a hands-on, executional focus. Where a CFO owns financial strategy and sits on the executive team, a VP of […]
How to Hire a Chief Experience Officer
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire a Chief Experience Officer to own the end-to-end customer experience as a single, coherent responsibility — and be clear about what they own relative to marketing, product, and service. Look for a cross-functional leader who can align the whole organisation around the customer through […]
What Does a Chief Compliance Officer Do?
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerA Chief Compliance Officer ensures a business complies with the laws, regulations, and standards that apply to it — building and overseeing the compliance programme, advising on regulatory risk, and fostering a culture of integrity. It matters most in regulated industries and as businesses grow, […]
What Does a Chief Risk Officer Do?
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerA Chief Risk Officer owns how a business identifies, assesses, and manages the risks it faces — financial, operational, strategic, regulatory, and reputational — building the framework to understand risk and helping the business take the right risks well, not simply avoid them. It matters […]
How to Hire a Chief Merchandising Officer
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire a Chief Merchandising Officer who combines genuine product and customer instinct with analytical rigour on planning, pricing, and inventory — and match them to your retail model and challenge. Because merchandising decisions directly drive sales, margin, and inventory, this is a commercially critical hire […]
How to Hire a Chief Growth Officer
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire a Chief Growth Officer where growth depends on integrating functions — marketing, product, data, and commercial — that would otherwise pull separately, and be clear about what the role consolidates and why. Look for a rare leader genuinely fluent across those functions who can […]
How to Hire a Chief Customer Officer
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire a Chief Customer Officer to give the customer a genuine owner and advocate at the top of the business — a leader focused on satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and lifetime value. Define what the role owns relative to marketing and experience, and hire someone who […]
Leading Through a Crisis: What It Demands of Leaders
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerLeading through a crisis demands calm and decisiveness under pressure, honest and frequent communication, and the judgement to act with incomplete information while protecting what matters most. The leaders who navigate crises well combine steadiness with the ability to make hard decisions fast and keep […]
Post-Merger Leadership Integration: Getting It Right
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerPost-merger leadership integration means deciding the combined leadership team quickly and fairly, aligning it around a shared plan, retaining the key people the deal depends on, and bringing two cultures together with care. Because integration is where deal value is most often lost, getting the […]
